Closed-loop MIMO systems typically transmit channel state information from a receiver to a transmitter over a feedback path. The channel state information may be used to employ beamforming to compensate for the current channel conditions increasing signal-to-noise (SNR) levels at the receiver. In some of these conventional systems, a beamforming matrix may be generated at the receiver based on the channel conditions. The beamforming matrix may then be provided to the transmitter as feedback. This feedback consumes bandwidth that might otherwise be available for data traffic. To reduce the overhead associated with this feedback, codewords of a known codebook may be provided instead of an actual beamforming matrix. The codewords may indicate which beamforming matrix is to be used by the transmitter.
In MIMO systems, the size of the codebooks may increase significantly with number of transmit antennas Nt and the number of transmitted data streams Ns. In some conventional systems, the size of the codebook may be based on the number of transmit antennas and the number of data streams. This results in a significant increase in feedback.
Thus, there are general needs for MIMO systems and methods for beamforming with reduced feedback. There are also general needs for MIMO systems and methods that make use of smaller codebooks. There are also general needs for MIMO systems and methods that provide improved performance without an increase in feedback.